Dr. Angelo receives PhD

Dr. Angelo successfully defended his PhD thesis, “Proficiency-Based Progression Training – Quality Assured Preparation for the Practice of Surgery” at University College Cork (UCC), Ireland on October 3, 2017. The related research (Arthroscopy Association of North America Copernicus Initiative) involved breaking down an arthroscopic instability repair for the shoulder into its component tasks and identifying potentials errors. Each of those step and error ‘metrics’ were carefully defined. The metrics were then combined with a shoulder simulator in order to be able to train the necessary skills and objectively assess the quality of a participant surgeon’s repair of an unstable shoulder. Orthopedic residents were trained in one of 3 pathways: 1) current training, 2) simulator-enhanced training, or 3) proficiency-based progression (PBP) training coupled with the simulator which required the demonstration of the ability to perform each of the steps to an acceptable standard of proficiency (i.e. show they could do each of the key steps with a minimum of errors) before progressing on to the next group of training skills. The surgeons who were required to learn, and demonstrate each of the tasks along the way were far more likely to be able to perform the entire procedure than those surgeons who simply practiced the steps, but weren’t required to show they had attained the specific skills. The PBP trained group’s performance was far superior to the other two training methods. Anthony Gallagher, PhD, DSc, and Eugene Dempsey, MD of UCC served as his advisors.